


κάθαρσις

by honeyblondes



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, Mentorship, Mothers and Daughters, Trauma and Healing, implied/referenced past sexual assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-03 15:43:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11535312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeyblondes/pseuds/honeyblondes
Summary: Lucy feared she'd lost herself entirely. Turns out, she was only misplaced.or,Lucy Wells, and healing.





	κάθαρσις

**“** _Tell me, sweet lord, what is ’t that takes from thee_

_Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?_

_Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth_

_And start so often when thou sit’st alone?_

_Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks..._

_To thick-eyed musing and curst melancholy?_

_… Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war,_

_And thus hath so bestirred thee in thy sleep,_

_That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow_

_Like bubbles in a late-disturbèd stream,_

_And in thy face strange motions have appeared,_

_Such as we see when men restrain their breath_

_On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these?_ **”**

-HENRY IV, PART I (ACT II, SCENE III)

 

* * *

 

**i.**

 

The House of Wells licks its wounds. So does Lucy. In the slackness of the time she has found herself with, she has begun seeking the company Nancy Birch.

It’s not as easy, now. Nancy has stopped turning up for meals, stopped dropping in unexpectedly with a gin bottle concealed in the folds of her old soldier’s coat, stopped materializing out of the shadows, sucking a secret between her teeth like a sweetie. Lucy can understand why, given what has transpired between Nancy and her Ma of late. Neither her Ma nor Nancy will breathe a word about Emily Lacey and, underneath the silence, Lucy can feel the wound festering.

It is Lucy who must go to her, at first under pretenses, and then just coming. She shows up at half-past 10 every morning with the chiming of the church bells. In the beginning, Nancy does not embrace her presence, exactly, but does not turn her out, either.

If someone were to ask Lucy the reason, she would claim boredom. However, in the privacy of her own heart, Lucy knows that it isn't that she lacks occupation. In truth, Lucy comes for something else entirely.

 

  
**ii.**

 

In the aftermath of Charlotte’s arrest and release, the inhabitants of Greek Street try to right themselves. 

Fanny has a trying time healing from her childbed, and her nipples crack and bleed as she breastfeeds. Kitty has turned quiet and contemplative; in between culls she studies the accounts ledger, worrying the quill between her teeth. Margaret’s grief for Charlotte hangs about her like a shroud, and Lucy watches as Pa tries to comfort her in vain. Instead, all have thrown themselves into work, and Ma most of all. She stays on her feet from dusk to dawn, wheedling and cajoling and dealing and arranging, as if she stops moving for a moment everything will fall down around her ears.

In the bustle and with the search for a keeper abandoned, her Ma’s attention turns elsewhere. With no culls to take, Lucy finds herself at loose ends; she feels underfoot. Jacob and Harriet’s girl and boy amuse themselves during the day, playing a game they’ve conjured out of street cobblestones and castoff rubbish. Kitty’s patience is thin, Marie-Louise entertains and gives Lucy nothing more than the time of day, and Fanny is occupied with the baby. Even the house itself seems to have no need of her; Harriet has attempted to occupy her children by putting them to work keeping it clean.

The third morning, Lucy wakes, washes, and dresses alone, struggling with the stomacher. She did not sleep easy; she does not, not anymore. She can never quiet the fear, even surrounded by the noise of the house in full swing, where she should feel safe as can be.

Someone will need her bed. Soon she’ll have to find somewhere else to go. Somewhere safe, free of men watching her like she’s sweet fruit ripe for picking.

15 minutes and a short walk later, she finds herself knocking on Nancy Birch’s door, scarred wood as familiar to her as the back of her hand. 

Violet’s eyes are hard when she answers, and Betsey stares baldly from her side.

“Don’t you just keep turning up like a bad penny?” Violet spits, but Lucy knows there’s no real malice in it. She understands what her mother has done to protect her, and the price she’s paid for it.

The noise has alerted Nancy, Lucy sees her appear from the dark of the hallway behind Violet’s right shoulder like a shadow. Her face is a cipher, blue eyes like ice.

Lucy thinks about her mother, for a moment, worried that Nancy will turn her away. The she thinks about _never you_.

The edges of Nancy’s mouth soften. She nods her head.

“Come in, then.”

Lucy does.

 

**iii.**

 

It doesn’t begin as training. It begins as curiosity.

It starts with a man coming looking for Nancy that afternoon, asking to be punished. Lucy expects to be sent home, but instead, Nancy tells her to keep quiet and ushers him in. He knows the way, already shedding his greatcoat as he disappears behind the curtain hanging at the far side of the room.

Nancy sighs and dons a mask, promises Lucy she’ll be back soon. She goes to the sideboard, opening it to reveal an array of instruments; whips of worn leather, a cane of peeled wood bleached white, strips of fabric of varying width and length. Nancy selects her flogger from a spot near the top, and closes the drawers to pivot on her heel. Before she follows the man in, Nancy stands for a moment at the threshold, breathing in once, twice, as her back straightens and her chin goes haughty.

The curtain flutters closed behind her after she steps through. It doesn’t stop Lucy from listening.

Nancy is steady and sure at her work. The air whistles around the flogger as she strikes. Unseen, the man whimpers and cries out with each lay of it across his skin. Nancy’s voice is hard-edged and imperious, sometimes loud and reprimanding, others soft and heady like a mouthful of honeyed wine. Nancy calls him filth and tells him he’s not good enough to lick the dust from her boots, that he disgusts her for _-pardon, Ned, what have you done this time? Ah, Nance, I’ve quarreled with the wife something awful_ . At the end, there is a quick sound of flesh on flesh - the familiar melody of a man being taken in hand - until Lucy hears him -Ned- groan out like he’s lost something vital. He cries then, ugly, pitiful sobs, begging Nancy’s forgiveness. _Go to your wife, Ned._

Lucy has never heard the like of it before.

When Ned leaves, he’s fully dressed and steps outside into the sunlight gingerly, hat on his head, looking like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. Nancy escorts him out, and returns with 10 shillings jangling in the pockets under her skirt. There’s a relaxed languidity to her movements; strands of her hair have escaped from the thong she queues it back with, and her cheeks are rosy with the exertion.

As Nancy sits back down before her, Lucy wonders what it would be like, to feel the weight of a flogger in her hand.

 

**iv.**

 

Lucy flinches the first time she hears one of Nancy’s men fight back. It’s a new one, a young soldier, who has never tried the punishment before. Nancy had spoken to him for a long time before agreeing to take him on. But, even though she’d warned him, the moment it became too much he’d reacted instinctively, raising his arm to block her blow and clipped her side. Lucy hears the grunt, and immediately tenses. Will she fight, or will she flee to get help?

Neither is needed. Nancy handles him with ease despite the fact he’s nearly half a foot taller than her, mastering him lightly with her boots and her flogger. He settles and, once he stops struggling, Nancy calms him with soft words Lucy can’t quite make out. He leaves satisfied, and pays well in apology. When Nancy returns, there is a red sheen staining the wooden switches.

“He left bloodied,” Lucy comments.

It’s been near a week since Lucy first turned up at Nancy’s door. The days have a rhythm; Nancy going about the business of everyday living while Lucy sits at the table, watching the square of sunlight coming through the window travel across the floor. Violet and Betsey come and go, sometimes accompanied, sometimes not. When she’s alone, Lucy has taken to opening the doors of the sideboard to peer at the contents inside, wondering at their uses. The stream of men ebbs and flows with the hour, and Lucy tries to mask her curiosity as she listens to what happens behind the curtain.  
  
Nancy, seated across the table running an oiled rag over the switches, turns to her, eyebrow already raised.

“This is no sport for the meek-hearted.”  
  
“He left bloodied,” Lucy repeats, gathering her skirts as she reaches across the table. She grasps the flogger and carefully traces a finger over the leather binding at the handle. It’s still warm from Nancy’s hand.

Lucy’s voice is weak when she continues. There’s a phantom ache at her back- her body remembering the cruelty of Lord Repton’s touch even though the marks have healed over.

“What does it feel like, to wield such power over one who wishes you harm?”  
  
Nancy folds her arms.

“That boy did not wish me harm, sweet. A body’s naturally inclined to strike back when someone strikes them. Sometimes they forget they asked it to begin with.”

Lucy swallows. When she speaks again, her voice is nearly a whisper.

“But if it was someone who did,” she pauses, casts her eyes down, and then raises them again, “mean it? To harm ya?”

Nancy looks up at her sharply, her gaze meeting Lucy’s for a long moment. Under the scrutiny, Lucy finds that Nancy, in this moment, is as unreadable to her as Greek.  
  
“Would you like to find out?” Nancy finally asks, eyes soft as sky. Her usual brusque tone is tempered with gentleness. Lucy can feel that there’s something else in the question, something underneath, left unspoken.

Lucy nods, and holds the flogger out to her.

Nancy goes back to oiling the switches without another word, but when Lucy leans closer to her, Nancy slows her movements with purpose, and allows her to watch.

 

  
**v.**

 

Lucy's newfound skittish nature has become a trial. The sound of moans through the walls, a backhanded comment by a cull come for another girl, a man touching her unexpectedly, is all it takes and she's gasping like a fish, shaking like a leaf. A cull sidles up to her once, after her ma leaves the room, and does nothing but watch her face as she plays. He does not say a word, or make a move, but Lucy feels the threat as real as she feels the seat underneath her and the stays in her corset. When Harriet comes to lead him out, she curls up once alone again, and cries until she stops feeling like hunted prey.

When she feels the tightness in her chest begin, Lucy tries to think back to Nancy dressed all in black the eve of the Pandemonium Masque, leading a man about by a leash. That night, Lucy’s hands had shaken as she’d played her harpsichord across the room from the man who had violated her, and then shaken anew when George Howard had cornered her after. As he’d pushed into her, she’d felt like she was drowning.

Nancy’s hands had gripped the leather of the leash easily, steady all the while. Her eyes had flashed sapphire as she’d laughed.

Lucy sees it again and again. She tries to burn what it looked like into her memory: a woman, without fear.

 

**vi.**

 

In the night now, Lucy lies awake. She can’t sleep anymore, and keeps company with the night-singing robins that nest in the eaves of the house. Tonight, moonlight shimmers through the windows, bathing the room in burnished silver and casting long, yawning shadows.

Then- a noise in the hall. Footsteps, mounting the stairs and alighting on the hall landing.

She knows the house and she knows the people she shares it with, and she waits to hear who is about this late. Her mother is restless now, walks the house like a shade, her roving taking her to Lucy’s door some nights, as if she is reassuring herself that her child still sleeps. Out of the others, Fanny’s steps are slow and steady, Kitty’s light and smooth, and Harriet’s near-silent as she steps soft-footed along creaking floorboards. Marie-Louise walks toe to heel, like a dancer, like a lady.  
  
The noise comes again, closer.

The gait is heavy, and she realizes, with a panic, that it is none of them. With a chill, she remembers. It’s what George Howard’s steps had sounded like, the last time he had entered her bedchamber. 

Lucy freezes, and hopes against hope that the ghost will continue past her room.

 _His soul is seeking vengeance_ , she thinks wildly.  
  
The footsteps stop at her door. 

She curls in on herself, back pressed hard against the headboard and fear coursing through her. Her heart gallops near out of her chest, and the handle of the door begins turning, agonizing slow. The room smells sickly sweet, like pomegranates left to rot in the sun, like the cologne men wear to mask the smell of unwashed flesh.  
  
Lucy does not scream. Instead, she bites her tongue, as she did when Lord Repton ravaged her, and again when George Howard had whispered in her ear.

The door cracks open, hinges screeching in the silence like a wail, and Lucy tastes blood.

Right before she can see the white-painted face, she wakes.

Her Ma is bent over her, hair wild and clad in only a shift, shaking her shoulders. Lucy’s face is wet, streaked with tears. Her ma is crying too.

Margaret Wells takes her daughter in her arms. 

“I’ve got you, darling girl. You’re safe with me.”

Lucy can still taste the iron, smell the sick-sweetness of rotten fruit, but her ma’s grip is strong and fierce. In them, cradled to her breast like Fanny does her own babe, Lucy allows herself to weep.

Her ma does not leave her side.

 

**vii.**

 

Nancy has something for her. She’d left Greek Street and her mother’s embrace as soon as the sun had risen, and fought the sensation she was being hunted as she’d walked, keeping to the walls, staying in the shadows.

She’s turned the corner onto Russell Street and there Nancy is, hat pulled low over her forehead, carrying a large bundle. When she catches Nancy’s eye, Lucy wordlessly follows her inside. Nancy sheds her hat, then her coat, and Lucy does the same.

It’s a strange sort of bag, sewn shut on both ends and stuffed full of old rags. Nancy lights a pipe, and then runs a cord through a loop on the top to fix it to the doorframe.

When Nancy turns to face her, her vulpine face is composed. But, Lucy has learned to read underneath it by now, and knows that the Nancy standing before her carries within her an anger as deep as the wine-dark sea. 

Lucy thinks she may be beginning to understand. 

“What would you say to them all? To the ones who hurt ‘ya, cared nothing for your pain?”

Lucy looks back at the ragbag and sees Lord Repton across from her at the table, and then she’s drowning under the weight of him and he’s in her and there’s nothing but pain pain _pain_ - 

When Nancy presses the flogger into her hand, Lucy finds she is trembling. She can’t get her grip.

_Have you ever laid with a man after insulting his manhood? He will pound you. To tripe._

She hits the ragbag with a scream, and a spark of anger inside her chest catches fire. 

“Show ‘em your strength.”

She thinks of Sir George grabbing her hair, of him pushing her to the bed and whispering _I am your Lord and Master I am your God_ and she grows hotter and hotter.

“I’ll pound you,” her voice shakes and she steels herself, “to tripe.”

She strikes again, and then the wildfire in her is consuming her, heat sparking through her from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair, and suddenly she’s screaming: “you worthless _cunt_."

Lucy strikes. She strikes. She strikes, strikes, _strikes_ , again and again. She sees Sir George’s blood on her hands and sunlight glinting off Lord Fallon’s knife and her mother’s pale face and Charlotte dragged away by lawmen and she keeps fighting until she can’t see through her tears. The room rings with the sounds of her anger and she cries until she can’t hold herself up. 

Her strength gives out, and she falls to her knees.

Nancy drops to her side then, smelling of tobacco and smoke and the bergamot scent she brushes through her hair. She takes Lucy under her, hugging her close as she weeps. They stay like that for a long time.

When she leaves Nancy’s at sundown, her hands are red with blisters. 

Next time, she thinks, she will remember to bring a pair of gloves.

 

**viii.**

 

The next time Nancy takes a cull with Lucy present, she leaves the curtain half-parted, and every time after that.

The blisters on Lucy’s hands slowly heal. Lucy has begun to hope that she is doing the same.

 

**ix.**

 

It’s the callouses that her mother notices.

They’re in the parlor, and Lucy is playing the harpsichord. She plays now, for hours, to entertain the men as best she can. If she’s not going to help fuck them, she thinks, this is the next best thing she can offer. 

Margaret ushers out a cull for Kitty, and then comes to sit beside her.

Her ma watches as Lucy’s fingers fly across the keys. Lucy wills them steady. It’s easier, now; her hands don’t shake so violently. 

It's a pretty tune, the song Betsey likes to sing about the girl who follows her soldier boy for love. Lucy has taught herself the notes. She hopes, someday, when things are at ease between Nancy and her Ma again, Betsey will sing along with her.

When the song ends, Margaret takes Lucy’s hand in her own, and turns it palm side up, unfurling her fingers like a flower. 

Her hands have grown rougher since the first time she used Nancy’s flogger, the blisters hardening into something tougher. Lucy is proud of them, proof of her growing strength.

Her ma looks at her hand like a palm reader, then slowly touches each of the callouses, one by one. Lucy tries to remember to breathe.

“Nancy’s been teaching me, Ma.

Margaret nods.

“The Scanwell girl told me. Says she’s seen you ‘round Covent Garden.”

There is no anger in her voice, and Lucy feels warmer.

“Your hands look like hers, you know. When she was learning ‘erself.”

Lucy looks up at Margaret’s face, and sees that her eyes are glassy with tears.

“I like it, Ma. It suits me.”

Margaret presses a kiss to her palm.

“I hope it gives you solace, love, like it did her.”

Lucy closes her fingers around her mother’s hand, and thinks about blessings.

 

**x.**

 

Lucy had once overheard Nancy and her ma talking, when she was small. It had been late in the night, a bottle of spirit shared evenly between them. Their words had been slow with drink and memory, their voices hushed with the hour. They'd spoken of possibility, of sustaining and defending, of duty, and how they could manage it.

Lucy hadn’t truly understood then, what they'd spoken of, but now she knows that there are many kinds of sustenance.

 

**xi.**

 

Lucy takes a deep breath before she looks at herself in the mirror, heart beating hummingbird fast.

The girl she sees standing on the other side of the glass looks back at her, rosy-cheeked and beautiful, holding a thin, flexible cane with the handle bound in soft leather. Lucy thinks she looks afraid.

She’d used Nancy’s flogger in the beginning, but, after trying the rest of Nancy’s impressive array of implements, Lucy finds she prefers this instead. She likes the way it bends, but does not break, likes the balanced weight of it in her hands.

She’s wearing Nancy’s coat, another of her gifts. It’s a man’s tailcoat in midnight blue, cut to her size by Nancy’s favorite sempstress.

 _To keep your skirts from hinderin’ your work, love._  

She thinks the blue brings out her eyes. Her ma would like that.

Margaret Wells will meet the girl in the mirror tomorrow. Lucy hopes she’ll approve.

The smell of tobacco smoke announces Nancy’s presence before Lucy sees her saunter in. Sure enough, she appears in the mirror at Lucy’s side in the reflection, smoothing her hands over Lucy’s shoulders to rest on her arms. It’s late- Nancy’s already abandoned her robe and her hair is loose, falling about her shoulders in a mess of black coils. She’s down to her stays and trousers, and Lucy thinks she’s never seen her quite so at ease. She wonders if she’s finally seeing Nancy as her mother knows her, who she is without the weight and severity of the responsibilities she's given herself.

Behind them, there’s a generous glass of gin, half-finished, abandoned on the table. In the mirror, Lucy meets Nancy’s eyes. There’s a soft smile turning up the side of Nancy’s mouth.

“So, how does it feel, love?”

Lucy knows she’s not talking about the fit of the coat. What she wants to do is tell Nancy that she’s healed over, that she’s fine, and back to being whoever she was before hunting with the Reptons, before George Howard. She wants to tell her that she has stopped having nightmares, that she no longer shrinks away when men pass her in the street. She wants it to be true. But Nancy has been honest with her, and she owes Nancy that much in return.

“I’m afraid, Nancy. What if it’s all no good?”

Nancy gently strokes a hand through Lucy’s hair like it’s years and years ago and Lucy is small again.

“You’ll be alright, girl,” she says, holding her gaze. “We both will.”  
  
At her shoulders, Nancy’s hands are strong and sure, warm on her skin through the fabric of the coat.

Lucy grips her slender whip, smooths the lapels of her coat, and finds that her own hands do not tremble. 

**Author's Note:**

> κάθαρσις, Greek for catharsis, was first coined c .335 BCE by Aristotle. Originally, it was a medical term for purgation. 
> 
> The excerpt from Henry IV included above is considered by some to be one of the earliest depictions of what we now know as PTSD.


End file.
